Revisiting the Cacowards (1994)

Preface: I intended to post this in March of 2019 (during the last period in which I was playing a lot of Doom), then changed my mind when I decided not to complete the series. But I recently returned to continue the series, and now I regret not publishing this set of reviews when I wrote them.

As a brief introduction, Doomworld has published a list of some of the best and most notorious fanmade mods for Doom - a top 10 for every year following the original release of Doom in 1993, called the Cacowards (named after the Cacodemon enemy in Doom). It's a great place to start if you're looking to play some of the best wads ("wad" is an informal term for a set of Doom levels, named after the .wad file format) the fan community has to offer. I played a bunch of them in the past, but now with my recent resurging interest in Doom, I've gone back for a replay, and this time I'm going to write down some of my comments/impressions as I play through them, which I'd regretted not doing the first time around. (To avoid overworking myself, I'm going to keep them brief, except where I feel compelled to elaborate). Let's begin with the first year of the Cacowards - 1994 (links available @ Doomworld):

Crossing Acheron

Good level. Cathedral-style architecture. Mix of brightly lit halls and dark tunnels. Lacking in "ominous" atmosphere, however (as compared to the Unholy Cathedral level in Doom episode 3). Sort of like the difference in a haunted house between night and day.

Aliens TC

I'm including alternate links here, because they worked better for me in 2019 than the Doomworld links. These can be played in GZDoom. Here is the classic version, and this is a new version with updated graphics. (I played the classic version).

Aliens has the reputation of being the first ever "total conversion" for Doom - in which graphics, sound, and sometimes even gameplay is tweaked. Modern wads may be on a whole different level, but back in 1994, this was the epitome of what a total conversion could be. It's immersive, and a natural blend - Aliens and Doom both being sci-fi/horror titles with monsters - as opposed to just throwing pop culture characters (like Homer Simpson or Sailor Moon) into a Doom level sheerly for the novelty. I hear it generated enough buzz to overshadow the release of Doom's official sequel, Doom II!

Playing it again, I'm impressed with how well it holds up, even after all these years (and how much I remember from that one time I played it years ago). The mod's atmosphere is genuinely terrifying, and it's impressive how well it captures the mood of the film. As you explore the decimated colony on LV-426, you'll be constantly looking over your shoulder as you tiptoe down dark corridors, dreading the moment when the tech environments start to give way to organic tunnels (excellent use of the spine wall texture, turned green), unseen hissing heard 'round every corner, trying not to think about what's lurking in the shadows as you navigate the labyrinthine air ducts.

The author has made clever use of Doom's toolset to realize this project - in particular, I like how the Lost Soul's behavior is used to make the facehuggers lunge at you, and how Doom's tendency to hide monsters and spring them on the player unsuspectingly is adapted in the form of hidden rooms concealed by camouflage to simulate the xenomorphs seemingly coming right out of the damn walls! In this conversion, Doom has effectively been transformed from a shoot 'em up to a run 'n' hide, enforced by a relative scarcity of health and ammo pickups. One level even requires you to seal off certain passages to prevent the aliens - which you do not have nearly enough firepower to eradicate - from overwhelming you, in an inspired gameplay mechanic that I'd like to see more of in Doom.

Suffice to say, it's good. Real good. But I'm gonna stop gushing and move on.

Doomsday of UAC

Simplistic, but creative. Large open areas, touted for its "realistic" architecture - overturned cars, reception halls, even a public restroom with individual stalls. Plus a really neat invisible staircase. In theory, I like the fact that the manmade structures are mapped and the demonic tunnels not (like you're viewing a schematic of only what's supposed to be there), but in practice it turns out that I don't like wandering around areas that don't show up on the map. Great level for its time; if only today's levels could be judged by the same standards (I say as an amateur editor who doesn't want to be drowned by the big leagues).

Galaxia

Good concept. Notable in that it's more than just a level - there's a back story to it. I like the underground train/subway environments, although as one reviewer has said, it's a bit tedious running back and forth across these long tunnels. Some custom and remixed sound fx give it a slightly different feel from regular Doom (were those pig noises I heard, like from Duke Nukem?).

Serenity/Eternity

Two full episodes, made by the same team, put out in the same year. I daresay these levels feel like they could have used a bit more care and thought put into them. I mean, they're structurally sound (and that, in and of itself, isn't a cakewalk), but there's not much rhyme or reason to the architecture, the levels don't have much of a flow (despite the superficial gimmick of building one letter of the title into the layout of each level), and the gameplay isn't properly balanced. Shall I be more specific?

There are too many nukage barrels. I like a strategically-placed nukage barrel as much as anyone, but one in every corner is excessive. There's too much ammo - especially boxes of shotgun shells. I know you want to have enough to get the job done, but I find it annoying when I have to leave too many pickups behind, and I'm also a proponent of punishing the player for being too reckless with their weapons by forcing them to use a chainsaw or their fists (with a Berserk pack - I'm not a sadist). Plus, I know everyone's favorite weapon is the shotgun (it's mine, too), but I enjoy switching weapons for tactical advantage (e.g., chainsaw against spectres, chaingun against cacodemons and lost souls, rocket launcher against barons, plasma rifle for when you get tossed into the center of a heavy fray), but when there's so much ammo you can literally use the shotgun for everything and still have boxes leftover, there's no incentive to mix it up.

The enemy selection is also a bit irritating. For example, there are lots of projectiles in close quarters. With little room to dodge, you're taking a lot of damage and (unlike ammo) there isn't a corresponding amount of health pickups to make up for it. Armor is also very rare, so that's even less damage mitigation. Choice of enemies also feels very arbitrary - like a little of everything sprinkled into each wave. I prefer to evaluate the monsters' strengths and weaknesses, and suit them to the terrain, so it's more of a tactical challenge, and not a repetitive chore. One of my favorite things about playing Doom is the feeling of satisfaction that comes from eradicating all the demons from a map. But in this wad, it just becomes tedious. Without even the super shotgun (exclusive to Doom II), who wants to mow down all these dense mobs, with a cacodemon in every room? I know that original Doom suffers from a smaller roster of tougher monsters, but it's not fun fighting one Baron of Hell after another (they're called "meat shields" for a reason), when you don't even have the rocket launcher (or very many rockets) or plasma rifle to kick things into high gear. If nothing else, it makes you appreciate how well the official game was balanced.

The list of things I liked about these levels is pretty slim. There's some neat lighting featured, and I really like the idea in the first level (sadly never revisited) of using damage floors to simulate solar radiation (or a toxic atmosphere). The movie theater in the second level is cool (like with the public restroom in Doomsday of UAC, I'm sensing the vacuum that Duke Nukem 3D would fill upon its release in 1996). And I have to give props to Eternity for using a midi version of the Halloween theme for the intermission music. But honestly, I don't think these levels are worth the time unless you're really bored.

Trinity College

Hailed as the first "photorealistic" recreation of a specific real-world location (apparently, the authors took pictures of the college and rendered the images into Doom textures). It's certainly an interesting exercise, although as a Doom level it doesn't really stand out.

Return to Phobos

Not a terrible set of levels, although there are some questionable segments. Certainly better balanced and thus more tolerable than Serenity/Eternity. I like that the architecture is reminiscent of classic, episode 1 Doom. A couple of the levels have an overabundance of switches. Doomworld touts this as a positive, but I find it annoying. Half the time you don't even know what the switches are doing, and it's tedious having to go back and forth, poring over everything with a fine-toothed comb, thinking that the level might be changing at any time. At this stage, I think I prefer authors who have a neat idea for a standalone level over those who feel compelled to produce a full episode (or two or three), where the creativity is spread thin, and gaps must be filled in to complete the set. Leave that to the professionals, and let the fans explore some more creative applications of the level-building software.

Slaughter Until Death/The Evil Unleashed

Now this is how you do a levelset. This is an episode 2 replacement, with good, creative level design. It's well-balanced - challenging, without being impossible. Secrets are well-hidden (almost too well-hidden). There are parts that are legitimately shocking; sometimes involving enemy traps, other times a flair for theatrics - like careful placement of mutilated corpses, and rooms that tell a story (I can't help wondering about that one space marine's body accompanied by a pile of corpses and just a few demons left alive - he must have put up one hell of a fight). If you only play one straightforward, classic Doom levelset from 1994 (that is, not novelty or conversion levels), forget Serenity, forget Return to Phobos, play Slaughter Until Death. Or, its sequel, The Evil Unleashed, an episode 3 replacement which is more of the same, if not even better level design. Lots of cool, tech-based locales - including a reactor core - and good use of moving floors and walls to maximize efficiency of the space used. You can't go wrong with either one. Better yet, play them both!

JUDGMENT: Keeping in mind that for any wad to win a Cacoward, it must have distinguished itself in some way, I'm making the assumption that you don't have time to play them all, and that you value my opinion (otherwise, you wouldn't be reading my reviews), so here are my recommendations for which wads are most worthy of your time.

Must Play: Aliens TC, Slaughter Until Death, The Evil Unleashed
Time Killers: Crossing Acheron, Doomsday of UAC, Galaxia, Return to Phobos
Skip: Serenity, Eternity, Trinity College

See you in 1995!

Checking In

So, two springs ago I finally released Ascension. Then I returned to working on Dragonfaith, which I posted an update for last spring. Since then (as predicted), I've been busy getting back out into the world post-lockdown, and haven't had much time for developing.

Truth be told, I've been working my ass off on my photography gig, modeling all summer long and processing photos in my downtime. Having just finished arranging my year-end portfolio, I'm dead sick of working on photography right now, and need a break.

I'm eager to get back to working on Dragonfaith, but in the meantime, I've started playing Doom again for pure stress release and relaxation. By the way, I did eventually get my SIGIL box, and it was awesome (I've already played through it twice on separate occasions).

I hinted once before about doing a series of reviews of old fan-made Doom levels that I like to play, and I'm thinking about going through with that now. I already have reviews of the first ten level sets written up from a couple years ago, and am starting in on the second ten now. So I think you can expect to start seeing those soon.

I promise I'm not going to even think about working on my own pet project Doom levels right now, as that's time I need to spend on Dragonfaith. Although looking back at the schematics for the level I was working on - damn, I'm impressed! I have so much ambition, I just wish I had a better ability to finish what I start...

Review: Dragon Quest IV (& III)

Preface: My RPG review series kinda fell by the wayside (like a lot of other things). This was largely a result of me quitting Dragon Quest III halfway through my first playthrough, and then helped along by the commencement of a separate project in which I've been introducing my significant other to the Final Fantasy series (I'm sparing her the tedium of the Dragon Quest series, because I want her to like the genre, not loathe it), to give her some context when she finally gets to play my own RPG (when it's ready for playtesting). So although I'm no longer playing through the Final Fantasies again myself (although I did play Final Fantasy IIIj for the first time recently), and thus not really writing reviews of them anymore, I consider it a worthwhile tradeoff to share my love of the genre with someone close to me (whom I get to watch playing these games for her first time). In a way, it's a bit like reliving my childhood. In any case, I did eventually go back and restart Dragon Quest III, which I finished, and then continued on to Dragon Quest IV, which I've now also completed. Here are some of my thoughts on those games - you may be relieved to hear that this will be [considerably] briefer than my previous, meandering "reviews".

Dragon Quest IV
(fyi, I'm doing these in reverse order)

This is the most fun I've had playing a Dragon Quest game so far (which bodes well for the next couple of releases). It's still frustrating at times (mainly being pummelled by enemies via a much too frequent random encounter rate) (oh, and using an expensive life spell five or seven times and not having it work...), but not nearly as consistently as in past games. I appreciate giving the Clinics access to the Imperial Scrolls of Honor, as the long trudge to the kings in their isolated halls of stone was becoming entirely gratuitous in DQIII.

I really enjoyed the way the game started with separate chapters, each introducing different characters (character development is still minimal, but leaps and bounds above previous games) that you get to grow a little bit before they all join your party in the last chapter. It was a great way to try out different jobs (merchant was the most fun, and a class that I never would have considered wasting time on before), without feeling like you're committing to something huge. Plus, I like how the extended team works in the latter part of the game much better than the character registration feature (which I never used) in DQIII.

I have mixed feelings about only being able to control the Hero and having the rest of the party on auto-pilot. I like being able to control my party on principle, but in practice, I haven't minded letting the computer take over so much. The AI is pretty decent (with a few exceptions - occasionally overusing useless spells and neglecting useful ones), and it makes the tedious quantity of battles just a little bit less labor-intensive. I've also learned that I can totally use more magic than I would normally ration out without it becoming a problem (in most cases, the OFFENSIVE tactic suited me for wiping out enemy groups more quickly).

It's worth mentioning, before I finish, that I used a couple of cheats - the Sword of Malice exploit in Taloon's chapter, and I used save states to shamelessly game the Casino (gambling sucks) - in order to get some better equipment/more gold (tip: four Meteorite Armbands means I can usually strike first and mitigate a lot of damage I would otherwise receive in battles). But given my experiences with Dragon Quest in the past, this is a game that I (rather uncharacteristically) have NO qualms about cheating at to even up the odds a little. And if it means I have more fun with less headaches, then where's the harm?

Dragon Quest III

Looking back at my notes, the highlights from Dragon Quest III were the introduction of the day/night cycle (which is pretty cool, even if it means you effectively have to explore each town twice), and my increasing confidence in using the Outside and Return spells (now with your choice of destination!), which are like Exit/Warp and fast travel (a Wing of Wyvern in spell form), which go a long way toward making dungeon crawling more manageable.

The combat was still frustrating as hell, though, and the option to switch jobs turned out to be more of a bane than a boon, as I got class change paralysis (not wanting to waste the time growing my experience through tedious battle after tedious battle for making the wrong strategic decision). It was so bad that I quit the game and started over many months later (as counterintuitive as that sounds).

And if I thought the Dragon Quest II endgame was annoying, having to basically replay Dragon Quest I after fighting the pseudo-final boss in DQIII (at which point I'd pretty much checked out) didn't have the novelty for me that I think the developers were going for. The irony is that just before this I had defended long RPG endgames in an online forum (thinking mostly of my fond memories of final dungeons in Final Fantasy - and having just recently played Final Fantasy III on the NES, which has a particularly long one*). But playing Dragon Quest totally flipped my opinion around - I guess it really depends on how much you like the game you're playing, whether you want it to drag on or not.

*Having later watched my SO trudge through the final dungeon in FFIII, only to get whupped by the final boss, and lose at least two hours of progress (it's hard enough finding that kind of time to sit down and play games together quietly at home, in the midst of our busy lives - especially post-COVID), I've gained a little more perspective. Ironically, I'd have to commend the endgame in Dragon Quest IV for being more forgiving - still long and drawn out (although not so bad as in the previous two titles), but more segmented and with ample opportunity for escape/saving your progress. I will certainly be taking this into account as I go into developing the endgame in my own RPG in the near future.

Anyway, it's a wonder I didn't quit the Dragon Quest series full stop after my experience with DQIII, but I can be persistent when I put my mind to something - and I'm glad I didn't quit, because with DQIV, the series finally appears to be turning itself around and beginning to embrace player-friendliness. I look forward to seeing what they came up with for the SNES, which was the golden age for the Final Fantasy series, at least.

Return to Dragonfaith (with Progress!)

Although this blog has been silent for the past year (since my beta release of Ascension), that does not mean that I haven't been busy. I've just been following the philosophy of working more and talking about working less. Moving on from Ascension was a perfect opportunity to return with full focus to Dragonfaith, aided by the longterm stability of my schedule during COVID lockdown (without the ever-present distraction of the outside world intruding into my life). That is now changing (for better and worse), since I have received the vaccine and am re-entering society. Which means this would be a good point to document the progress I've made in the past year.

For many years now, since I upgraded from RPG Maker VX Ace to the new version RPG Maker MV (which by now has already been replaced with RPG Maker MZ - but I'm not upgrading again), I've been locked into the process of transferring everything I'd already completed in VX Ace over to MV. Well, I'm happy to report that I am finally finished with that phase and am developing new areas of my game again. I've completed five new dungeons in the past year (I take pride in my level design, and a lot of time and effort goes into creating a dungeon from a blank page), and I spent over a month last holiday season compiling combat-related graphics, which also means that I have my full enemy roster (including bosses) pretty much picked out.

What's next? Lifting quarantine restrictions (and more trips and social visits) means I will unfortunately be more distracted and less focused, but I'm going to continue on the path I'm walking - finishing up the mapping (I'm getting towards the endgame now). I've also been drafting scenario as I go (which means writing dialogue and also choreographing cutscenes). When I'm finished with the adventure and dramatic aspects of my game, then I can turn my full focus to the action - engineering the combat and tweaking numbers until I have a functional RPG on my hands. That's the part when you'll be able to start testing it.

For the first time since I started developing this game (a sobering seven years ago), before I knew how much work went into making an RPG (especially all by one's self), I can envision a day when it's complete in a playable format, from start to finish (with the same disclaimers I gave for Ascension - it will never be perfect, but at some point you have to put the brush down). I've taken to updating a checklist to give me a [very] rough idea of how far through the development process I am, to inspire me to keep working toward that goal. And also to show that I haven't just been sitting on my hands these past seven years, since I've taken on this mammoth project (to be completed in my free time). Without spoling too many details of the game, here's a chart of my progress:

Mapping:

World Map............................................ incomplete*
Towns/Outposts....................................... 11/13 complete
Dungeons............................................. 13/17 complete

*I know where all the important stuff goes, but filling out a 256x256 tile grid is proving to be a monumental challenge.

Writing:

Scenario/Choreography................................ ~25/32 scenes drafted*
NPC Dialogue......................................... on the light side**
Menu Captions........................................ on the light side**

*This category is approximate since I may feel it necessary to add/remove (more likely add) dramatic moments to the game as I go along.

**This is largely flavor text that I can fill in once the world (and combat mechanics) are more fully realized.

Graphics:

Enemies.............................................. pretty much complete
Battle Backgrounds................................... pretty much complete
Tilesets/Characters.................................. pretty much complete
Skill Animations..................................... indeterminate*

*Animations can be a lot of work, but it depends on how much customization I opt for (which I won't know until I dive more deeply into the combat).

Combat:

Equipment (Items/Weapons/Armor)...................... partially implemented
Skills/States........................................ partially implemented
Enemies/Troops....................................... partially implemented
Math (Growth Curves/Damage Formulas)................. ???

This last category is going to take a lot of work (and may require some coding for unique effects). I've been putting it aside while working on the mapping (although I have a rough outline for much of it, and have worked on bits and pieces of it here and there), but it represents the final hurdle between me and completion. Add to that the world map, and the endgame maps/scenario (which is next on my plate), and that's mainly what I have left to do. So now I'm going to get back to work!